1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a control apparatus, a control method, and a storage medium, and particularly to, for example, a control apparatus and a control method for conveying a print medium such as rolled printing paper, performing marginless print using an inkjet printhead, and cutting and discharges the paper.
2. Description of the Related Art
A printing apparatus incorporated in a printer, copying machine, facsimile apparatus, or the like is configured to supply a print medium from a feeding unit and print an image on the print medium by a printhead based on image data. In general, a print medium such as roll paper, a cut sheet, or a plastic sheet is used. In particular, many printing apparatuses that handle a large print medium use a so-called rolled print medium, and generally include a cutting mechanism that cuts printed roll paper at a predetermined position.
A printing apparatus including a cutting mechanism conventionally uses two types of marginless print, that is, marginless one-cut print and marginless two-cut print to produce a print product without a margin on the four sides. In the marginless one-cut print, images to be continuously printed in the conveyance direction of roll paper are printed without adding a margin between them, and the boundary between the printed images is cut by the cutting mechanism, thereby implementing marginless print. In the marginless two-cut print, a margin is added between images to be continuously printed in the conveyance direction of roll paper. On each of the leading end side and the tail end side of each image in the conveyance direction of roll paper, the cutting mechanism cuts the boundary between the image and the margin at a portion close to the image, thereby implementing marginless print.
In the marginless one-cut print, since no margin is added between images, waste paper can be reduced. On the other hand, in the marginless two-cut print, a margin is added between images to absorb a cutting position shift caused by the position shift of the cutting mechanism or an error due to conveyance accuracy limit and an error due to the cutting accuracy of the cutting mechanism in the roll paper width direction. This can prevent adjacent images from stepping in and maintain the quality of the print product. Hence, the user selectively uses marginless one-cut print or marginless two-cut print in accordance with the application purpose of a printed image or print product.
As a printing apparatus having a marginless print function of this type, a printing apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-181843 is known. In Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-181843, upon receiving a marginless print job, it is determined whether the received job prints a plurality of images. If the received job prints a plurality of images, and the boundaries between the images to be continuously printed are similar, marginless one-cut print is used. If the boundaries between the images to be continuously printed are not similar, or the received job prints one image, marginless two-cut print is used.
Note that marginless one-cut print needs to continuously print a plurality of images in the conveyance direction of roll paper without adding a margin between them. If the received job prints one image, images are not continuously printed. Hence, the image is printed by marginless two-cut print. The image printing state of marginless print in the conventional printing apparatus will be described here with reference to a drawing.
FIG. 11 is a view showing a state in which images are printed by specifying marginless one-cut print in different jobs by the conventional printing apparatus. FIG. 11 illustrates a state in a case where different job A, job B, and job C of marginless one-cut print are continuously received, and the images are printed on roll paper 1.
Note that the job A, job B, and job C print two images, one image, and one image, respectively. As shown in FIG. 11, the conventional printing apparatus prints a first image A101 of the job A and a second image A102 of the job A without adding a margin between them. On the other hand, a margin is added between the second image A102 of the job A and an image B101 of the job B and between the image B101 of the job B and an image C101 of the job C. That is, a leading end fed portion 30 as waste paper is formed between the jobs, that is, between the second image of the job A and the image of the job B and between the image of the job B and the image of the job C.
As described above, in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-181843, when a marginless print job is received, it is determined whether the received job prints a plurality of images, and the mode is switched between the marginless one-cut print and the marginless two-cut print in accordance with the determination result. That is, the mode is switched between the marginless one-cut print and the marginless two-cut print in accordance with the number of images and the print images in the same job.
However, upon printing a plurality of images in one job using marginless one-cut print, efficient paper use is possible. However, upon printing one image, waste paper is created because of switching to marginless two-cut print. In addition, continuous image print by marginless one-cut print is possible only in the same job. For this reason, if images of different jobs are continuously printed by marginless one-cut print, margins are added between the continuously printed images. Hence, the margin portions are formed as waste paper.